It is not easy to love Barack Obama.

Obama may be saving capitalism, helping General Motors and Ford run  again, reforming Wall Street and overhauling the US healthcare system, but the American voters gave him resounding “no” at the polls earlier this week in evaluation of his achievements. Some attributed the loss to his failure to communicate and perceptions of “high-mindedness”.

For Americans who don’t like him — I have to quote The New York Times’ Nick Kristoff — Obama comes off as “remote, detached, inauthentic and arrogant”.

Even Democrats and independents who voted him into office in 2008 have lost faith in Obama, whom they see as having given in to both Republicans and Wall Street.

Late last year, people in Indonesia were elated upon hearing Obama would visit his childhood home in March. Eleven months and two cancellations later, the enthusiasm has waned, and now Obama’s upcoming visit looks like just another state visit by another foreign leader.

I am a big fan of Obama, and not only have I been disappointed, but I also had to pay a steep price for it.
I have been rooting for Obama ever since a number of US publications printed stories about his trip to Kenya in 2006, back when he was still a junior senator.

I have made a serious investment in Obama. I bought all five issues of Rolling Stone magazine that have had Obama on their cover, as well as practically every book or periodical that has put Obama on their covers.

But, my greatest contribution to Obama was this: I was in Illinois, Obama’s home turf, when he was declared the presidential victor, beating GOP candidate John McCain.

I had lived in DeKalb, a small college town 128 kilometers outside of Chicago, for over a year when US voters decided to put an African-American in the White House as their Commander-in-Chief on
Nov. 4, 2008.

The night when Obama was expected to deliver his victory speech in Chicago’s legendary Grant Park, I was home alone with my daughter in my small apartment, faced with this conundrum: no one was available to baby-sit my four-year-old, and I had to attend the most grueling class of the fall semester on international political economy.

So, rather than just skipping class and being stuck at home with my daughter watching a live broadcast on CNN of an event that was only a two-hour drive away, I decided to head to Chicago to join the historic Grant Park rally.

Even without the rally, Chicago’s traffic is notoriously bad, so I decided to take the train to get downtown instead. The catch is that I had drive more than 32 kilometers to get to the nearest railway station for an inbound Chicago train.

I drove less than a half-hour heading to the station, during which time I managed to observe the 88 kilometer an hour speed limit. But minutes before reaching the station, I made that stupid mistake — I was doing 64 in a 40.

A police car soon followed me with sirens blaring and pulled me over. As if being pulled over by a Kane County police officer for speeding was not intimidating enough, the officer also found my daughter sitting without her booster securely strapped onto the backseat.

Fast forward two months. I had to go court, and when the hearing wrapped up I was instructed to pay US$600 for speeding and failing to secure my daughter in the back seat.

I arrived three hours late for the Grant Park rally, and after cruising through the impossible crowd of Obama supporters with my daughter sleeping in her stroller, I found that there was no way for me to get close to the stage where Obama would deliver his speech.

I finally found a spot where I could watch Obama’s speech on a jumbotron, which was broadcasting a live CNN feed.

Now, more than a year after the fact, I like to think that the $600 fine is my campaign contribution to Obama, the price that I had to pay to bear witness to his historic election. As for my daughter, now she always gets worked up whenever Obama appears on television.

Oh, and to think I got a B for my international political economy class!

— M.  Taufiqurrahman

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